Thoughts on books, reading and publishing from the staff and friends of the Tattered Cover Book Store.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Pete Discovers Neil Gaiman

Our bookstore recently held a signing for Neil Gaiman that drew
nearly a thousand fans, maybe more. I'd never read any of his books
before and figured that The Ocean at the End of the Lane was a good
place to start. It's a fairly short novel, around 180 pages, and some
I've spoken with found it so compelling that they read it in one sitting.
I, too, found it compelling—stunning even—but it took me about a
week to read it, to savor it.

Told from the perspective of an older man looking
back on a strange occurrence when he was seven, the novel is part ghost
story, part fantasy, part mind bender. After witnessing a suicide on the
edge of his family's land, the boy is taken under the wing of an 11
year old girl from the adjacent farm. The girl lives with her mother and
grandmother in this world, but also lives in another world that is
quite extraordinary, beautiful and terrifying in equal doses. Not to
give anything away, but things happen.

I must note that this novel gave me very vivid
dreams (that or it was the chili I ate), and I feel if I ever see some gray
fabric-like thing flapping in the breeze, I'm definitely headed the
other way. That was no ordinary laundry.